In a message dated 4/24/98 12:09:37 AM Central Daylight Time, dpitsch@ix.netcom.com writes: << What exactly does having perfect pitch mean? >> One of the most respected piano technicians in the industry, Franz Mohr (whom I admire and respect greatly), the late Vladimir Horowitz's personal technician and friend wrote a book called, "My Life with the Great PIanists". In it, he wrote a whole chapter which refutes the very notion of "perfect pitch". He is often known to say, "There is nothing perfect in this world this side of Glory". I do not think anyone will be able to find a quote from a well-stablished reference book that defines "perfect pitch". It is simply something that people say. There may be some concensus of opinion about what it means but the idea that anyone's brain is infallibly tuned to a certain frequency is pure nonsense. If you carry this idea forward, so it mean that each note of the scale must infallibly equal the frequencies that Helmholtz defined? If so, then one should tune a piano with a Strobe Tuner and be done with it for then that piano will have "perfect pitch". If you accept that the piano's tuning must have small deviations in order to compensate for inharmonicity (which it must) and that these deviations are different from piano to piano, where is there "perfection" in the pitch? Now what about these Historical Temperaments? Their intervals are all different than Helmholtz' scheme which purports to "solve the problem". No musicians or singers ever have a problem playing in tune with a piano tuned this way, those kinds of intervals were what was common practice until relatively recently. They are natural to music. If different kinds of intervals can all be musically acceptable, where is the "perfection" in the pitch? Some singers and other musicians claim to have "perfect pitch". Yet any good modern performer uses vibrato and portamento to make the musical phrasing sound pleasing to modern musical taste. If every musical instrument or voice were tuned to only the frequencies that Helmholtz came up with and were not allowed any bending of these frequencies with vibrato or portamento, all music would indeed sound uninteresting and dull. Just last weekend, I saw a touring company production of Rogers & Hammerstein's Carousel. One might have said that it was a "perfect" performance. There was not a single flaw. It was over in exactly 2 1/2 hours. Instead of a full orchestra, there were a few instruments and a couple of synthesizers (tuned in ET, of course). There was no "milking" of phrases. All tempos were strictly held. There were no pauses for sustained applause. Nothing sounded the least bit out of tune but there was also none of the very special quality that an orchestra pit full of real professional musicians has either. In my opinion, it was an extremely lifeless and uninteresting interpretation of the music, but it was "perfect". >From the time I was a child, I could recognize which note was being played on our piano at home even though the instrument was never tuned from the time it was delivered until 8 years later. I still remember the man who tuned it telling me that it had drifted flat from "about 1/4 step in the middle to 1/2 step in the treble". People had told me back then that I had "perfect pitch" but when I realized that I could tell one note from the other whether or not the piano were tuned, I realized there was nothing perfect about anything. I found the work of a piano technician so fascinating that I became one later on. Today, I can tell which note is which, which chord is which, which key is being played in whether the piano is tuned or not, no matter what the pitch is and regardless of temperament. There is nothing "perfect" about any of that and so I do not claim to have "perfect" pitch, I merely have a "good ear" or natural aptitude music. Franz Mohr said in part, "Over the years, quite a number of people have claimed to me that they have perfect pitch. (snip) [This] would mean being able to say, without any reference point, that middle A is vibrating at 442 cps, or that it is vibrating at 438. (snip) No one with their natural sense of hearing can differentiate..." I do hear stories of people whose sensitivity to whether an A4 is really 440 or not seems to be amazingly accurate. Tuning to A440 consistently is important for many reasons. If we, as musicians always hear A4 at 440, we may well be able to recognize a very slight deviation from it when tuning. If we hear something different every time, how could we know the difference? Franz Mohr goes on to give a number of anecdotes about standard versus non standard pitch and people who claim to have "perfect pitch". While there may be some people with a very good sense of pitch, I have never seen any scientific study where any individual has been proven to have an infallible sense of pitch. All reports are always anecdotal. Even if someone were to prove that a certain individual could consistently and without error detect more than a 1¢ deviation of 440 with no pitch reference, my reaction would be, "so what?". Does that make that person a better musician? What particular advantage is there to that? For the sake of those who are outsiders who may read this List for research and information purposes, let's please not have professional piano technicians using the term, "perfect pitch". It is not a valid concept, it is just a popular notion. Bill Bremmer RPT Madison, Wisconsin
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